Daphne Bramham: One in three social workers not qualified for their job

It’s time to get rid of act’s outdated exemption

Justice Thomas Gove, in his inquiry 20 years ago into the death of four-year-old Matthew Vaudreuil found only a third of the social workers who dealt with the case were properly trained. In his recommendations, he said people providing direct services to children and their families should “at minimum, be required to have a bachelor of social work degree as a basic qualification. A master of social work should continue to be preferred.”

Photograph by: bill keay
, Vancouver Sun

Would you be okay if you knew the surgeon about to amputate your leg wasn’t really a doctor and had only taken a short course in how to use a saw?

Would you be comfortable driving across the new Port Mann Bridge if the person who engineered the span had only completed a two-year course in drafting?

Probably not.

Yet one in three of the B.C. government’s so-called “social workers” don’t meet the minimum professional requirements set out in provincial legislation.

These workers are making decisions that can be as life-changing for children and families as an amputation. And, when they make the wrong ones — as the representative for children and youth has pointed out on too many occasions — the decisions can have fatal consequences.

But a third of them lack the specialized knowledge and training to assess and identify crisis situations and diagnose the remedies needed to keep children safe.

They are not legally allowed to call themselves social workers even though that’s the work they do.

What makes it worse for those working in child protection is the children’s ministry budget is now 24-per-cent less than it was in 2001, yet the complexity, workload and pressure that front line staff face is more acute than ever.

The only reason the province gets away with this situation is because of an exemption written into the Social Work Act when it came into force in 1969.

It exempted the federal government, school boards, municipalities, Indian bands, tribal councils and treaty First Nations from hiring the very social workers whose qualifications the act set out to define.

The result is that when the most vulnerable British Columbians seek help, there is a good chance the social worker they are dealing with isn’t properly qualified and isn’t registered with the B.C. College of Social Workers.

The Social Work Act was created in 1969 because until then, anyone could claim to be a social worker. With no regulation, it meant there was no recourse for anyone who complained that a self-proclaimed social worker had behaved badly.

What the act did was bring the profession in line with others such as doctors, nurses, engineers and dentists.

Because it was a big change, the exemptions may have made sense 45 years ago. At the time, it may have been difficult to find enough qualified people to fill jobs in rural areas and the north.

But these days? British Columbia is home to 10 schools of social work. So supply shouldn’t be a problem.

The Social Work Act was updated six years ago. The B.C. College of Social Workers was established with the power to investigate complaints against its member and discipline social workers who fail to meet the ethical standards and conduct outlined in the act.

However, the hiring exemptions remained. So clearly, retaining the ability to not hire qualified people was a deliberate policy decision.

What’s not clear is why the B.C. government and the other exempted ministries and agencies would want to hire people to do this work who only have diplomas or completely unrelated degrees.

Justice Thomas Gove’s inquiry 20 years ago into the death of four-year-old Matthew Vaudreuil found that only a third of the social workers who dealt with the case were properly trained.

In his recommendations, he said people providing direct services to children and their families should “at minimum, be required to have a bachelor of social work degree as a basic qualification. A master of social work should continue to be preferred.”

He recommended the government provide incentives to its existing staff to upgrade their qualifications to bachelor’s and master’s degrees, including distance education for those in remote communities.

While two-thirds of those doing child protection work for the government are qualified social workers, the overwhelming majority have only a bachelor’s degree — Gove’s and the legislation’s minimum requirement.

John Mayr, registrar for the College of Social Work, emphasizes that upgraded qualifications and regulation alone won’t solve all the problems. But he says it is an important piece in a complex system.

As Mayr points out, social workers — the same as teachers — have not been able to negotiate workloads in their union contracts, nor can workload issues be grieved or arbitrated.

These are huge issues, as the Child and Youth Representative’s report on the suicide of a 14-year-old girl pointed out. The report made frequent references to front line workers being overwhelmed by the caseload they were required to handle and “not fully trained to meet the demands of child and family services.”

The qualifications problem could be solved by the government abiding by its own act rather than continuing with its self-exemption.

As for the caseload problems, Mayr says, registered social workers can use the Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics to demand and drive improvements.

March is National Social Work month, so here’s a thought: Rather than issuing a standard proclamation, the B.C. government could acknowledge the value of well-educated, well-trained professionals by ending the exemptions from hiring them.

Justice Thomas Gove, in his inquiry 20 years ago into the death of four-year-old Matthew Vaudreuil found only a third of the social workers who dealt with the case were properly trained. In his recommendations, he said people providing direct services to children and their families should “at minimum, be required to have a bachelor of social work degree as a basic qualification. A master of social work should continue to be preferred.”

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